Good Reputation Sleeping

Best of Photojournalism 2008

Best of Photojournalism 2008
Originally uploaded by Burnt Pixel.

Just got back from a long week of judging the Best of Photojournalism contest. We were, again the guests of The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, and again, we hardly had opportunity to take advantage of the Florida spring.

What we did see was more wonderful online journalism, over 900 unique urls this time around!

In case any of you have been under a rock for the last two years, web video is big and about to 'blow up'. And lest anyone be confused - the best web video bears little resemblance to spot news photography - it is film making, plain and simple.

Check out the top winners at BOP.

The Cult of Leica

A Critic at Large: Candid Camera: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker.

"There have been Leica cameras since 1925, when the Leica I was introduced at a trade fair in Leipzig. From then on, as the camera has evolved over eight decades, generations of users have turned to it in their hour of need, or their millisecond of inspiration."

Wonderful article on the Cult of Leica!
Also a good trace of the history of photography in the late 20th, early 21st century.

Eye Track, 2007

Navigating slide shows: What do people choose when every choice is possible?.

"But perhaps the most interesting observation was the very low level usage of the non-linear approach (and when it was used, how few slides were observed.) Is the linear orientation to looking through material so hard-wired into our media usage that it is, and will continue to be, the preferred way to take in media? Even when it was visual information – as this was – and did not logically need to follow a narrative thread – people preferred to move through in the order it was presented. What does this observation tell us about innovation in digital storytelling and our audience’s tolerance for new design paradigms."

Thanks Richard!

Hacking My Reality

The first time the power of the net hit me was way back in 1997 when I posted my first gallery of photography, some pics of trips to Cuba, on my website. A day or so after they went up, I got an email from Japan, someone who had seen the photographs and wanted to say hi. My photographs had just gone global in an instant.

The light bulb went on, the ground shifted, hell froze over - I got it.

A few days ago I finally made good on an invite I received a couple of weeks ago from a netizen named Mike Lee. We came to each other's attention through a website called hiptop Nation where we both started posting photos from our Sidekicks way back in 2003. I soon left for the greener pastures of better voice communication and bigger phonecam pics, but we kept reading each other's blogs and soon met up again on the uber-photo site Flickr.

We had lunch near The Post and chatted about life on and off line for almost 2 hours. A main topic of conversation was our admiration for the work of John Maeda at MIT. Turns out that Mike, through his gig at AARP has spent a good deal of time in the Maeda-sphere and clearly saw my eyes light up every time he recounted some of the things he saw and did while there.

Mike, who looks innocent enough, has hacked my reality - I got an email from the good Dr.'s office yesterday and I will enter the sphere in a couple of days. Life hack, via hiptop, Flickr and the web, courtesy Mike Lee.

Photography 2.0 on the Radio

I had an interesting time on Christopher Lydon's Open Source Radio show last week. It was wonderful to share the mic with Heather Champ, one of the pioneers of Photography 2.0 with the Mirror Project, who now is Community Manager for Flickr. It was a bit strange, however, to hear the comments of Fred Ritchin, who seemed to want to cling to the 'top down' media hierarchy of we tell you what you should be interested in.

I was also surprised at his reluctance to give the amateur photo community its due by insisting that they shouldn't be spoken of in the same context as photo great Henri Cartier-Bresson. What was Cartier-Bresson before the fame? An amateur named Henri who liked taking photos with that new, small camera called a Leica.

And why don't we like the self-portraits? Why is it art when Lee Friedlander does it and not when the photographer is Solea?

I thought most of us in the main stream media had come to realize that it is better to embrace, understand and get on board, rather than to try and stand in front of the 21st century media train. Technology and the internet are changing photography just as they have changed society; how we choose to use our new tools is the only question worth asking.

To hear the show, follow the Open Source link above, or click here for the mp3.

Long Distance URL

MYBEDROOMVIEW.jpg
Originally uploaded by Space Explorer.

Wow!
Just great stuff for the imagination of us all!
You go girl!

Save Your Pennies!

Leica M8 Hands-on Preview : Digital Photography Review.

...fifty-two years after the M3, and just in time for Photokina, Leica has made another historical introduction, the first digital M series, the M8. This new rangefinder digital camera has the classic design, build and function of the M series but utilizes a completely digital imaging system. The M8 has a specially designed ten megapixel CCD sensor which being slightly smaller than a film negative introduces a 1.33x field of view crop. This ratio conveniently converts several standard M lenses to sort-of equivalent steps (so 21 mm to approx. 28 mm, 28 mm to approx. 35 mm).

Why Print Still Matters

Why Print Still Matters
Originally uploaded by Burnt Pixel.

As our society, thanks to the dominance of TV and the increasing ubiquity of the Web, becomes more visual, how we present information is more and more important.

While TV has gone for the shotgun; information dancing through every corner of the screen, and the web is still trying translate the 3-D world into HTML, print has centuries of practice and refinement under its belt.

The result, on the best of days, is presentation that both stops you in your tracks and helps you move through words and pictures in a way that both informs and entertains.

Jill

Babeth’s Feast - New York Times.

The French fashion editor Elisabeth Djian, who goes by the more wholesome-sounding Babeth, can often be found sitting, arms crossed, in the front row. She has the intimidating look of a French madam, heightened by stiletto booties, a wink of a black bra and a laugh as free as salt. There’s a knowing quality about her without an eagerness to reveal herself. I once asked Djian what her life was like in the 1980’s when, as the fashion director of the influential little magazine Jill, she captured, and created, the ultrafeminine look of that era. Her answer sailed as cleanly as an arrow over my bow. “Lovers,” she said." - Cathy Horyn, NYT

Anyone who has been to my house or gone with me on vacation knows that magazines are a MAJOR part of my life. Its no accident that my two most favorite jobs were as a photographer for the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine in the late '80's and as Photography Editor of The Washington Post Magazine from 1999 till 2005.

Growing up on Long Island, magazines were my escape; my dad brought home a bunch, including several photography mags, and National Geographic was always around. When I decided to make the switch from law to photography, magazines and photo books paved the way.

Jill was one of those magazines that helped me make sense of what it was to be a photographer. It presented challenging fashion and portrait images in a tactile format; you could get personal with this mag, it was never stuffy or elitist. You felt like you held art in your hands, and for a very reasonable import price of $4.95, you did.

AV Club

Too Much Technology!
Originally uploaded by Burnt Pixel.

Here is the new unit that will change my staff of photographers into audio-gathering, slideshow fiends!
The mp3 below was recorded with the R-09 and a Sony stereo mic.

Download edirol09.mp3